YIB student Carolina Portilla promotes AIG/ financial services insight days

Carolina Portilla is a Royal Holloway Management Year-In-Business student, currently out on placement, working for the international insurance firm AIG (sounds familiar ? former Manchester United football club shirt sponsors before Chevrolet took over). Helping to host student insight days below on behalf of her company, Carolina wants to provide other Royal Holloway students the same opportunity she got at AIG last year, having been lucky enough to take part of the 2016 Internship cycle prior to being offered a placement. 

All of the events listed below provide insight not just into AIG, but more broadly into the financial services sector. 

Importantly attendees will get priority consideration for the 2017 internship cycle.

Carolina says her experience as an intern in AIG last year really helped her, as “being part of the AIG internship program gave me a platform I would have not gotten elsewhere. Throughout my placement I got exposure to senior leaders not just within the organisation but within the industry, that has helped me raise my personal profile."

"I even got to work directly with the Executive Committee! The work I was involved with and the projects I got to take partake in gave me the tangible experiences needed to make decisions about how I want to start shaping my future and unique examples of skills and competencies I can use to stand out in future job interviews”

In efforts to reach a diverse pipeline of new talent AIG (American Insurance Group) is hosting several Insight days aimed at university students to get them to explore and perhaps consider a career in the financial services sector/insurance industry.

The current events are as follows:

1) LGBT+ insight day on the 12th of October 

2) Women's insight day 26th October   

3) African Caribbean insight day on the 2nd of November

4) An evening with the CEO on the 29th November 

Check AIG's website for details:

https://www.brightnetwork.co.uk/graduate-events/aig-lgbt-career-insight-day-2016

To sign up and find out more please email emeauniversityrelations@aig.com

Thanks Carolina for wanting to share these opportunities with your peers.

Call back afternoon : 27th September

It was good to welcome many of our YIB students currently out on placement to our Call back afternoon at Royal Holloway on 27/9/16. The afternoon was run by Dr Catherine Harbor (Academic Director for the programme) and Emma Baker (Careers Consultant for Year in Business)

The afternoon provided the opportunity for the Year in Business students to return to college and meet other students out on placement and share their learnings to date. Students shared the challenges of commutes to work and talked about how they had been impressed (and occasionally daunted!) at the amount of responsibility they had been given by their companies in such a short time. It is very positive to hear how many students have exposure to senior managers within their Companies/ departments and all feel they have been given "real" jobs where their role can make a difference.

This year students have placements at a whole range of companies with positions in varying disciplines. Those at the Call back aftenoon were working at AIG, Costco, DHL, Eon, Grohe,IBM, L'Oreal, Microsoft, Valspar, VMware, Volkswagon and Winser Fashion. 

Students this year have secured a whole range of different positions including : Marketing Channel Coordinator placement ; Sales and Business Development placement position ; Supply Placement positon ; Marketing internship; Commerical analyst; Customer Services placement position.

The Prospects database is a good source of information for finding out what different roles entail:

https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles

The YIB students heard more about the the Academic element of their assessment : the Case Study which links work experience to relevant theory studied in the previous 2 years and the Personal Development portfolio containing STAR examples based on skills demonstrated during the work placement.

It was good to see so many of the YIB students staying on to do video profiles in which they shared more information about their placements and gave recommendations to Royal Holloway YIB students in their 1st and 2nd years (watch out for new video profiles on this blog!). We also appreciated a number of them staying on for the Year in Business evening event for 2nd years and either making presentations or talking informally to students at the Placement Fair.

Welcome week Year in Business : 20th September 2016

We welcomed over 100 1st year YIB students at the Boiler House, Royal Holloway on September 20th

Dr Catherine Harbor (Academic Director for the programme) , Emma Baker (the Careers Consultant for YIB) and Katharine Radford (Year in Business Programme Officer) gave an introduction to how the Year in Business programme works and the benefits students can expect from a year in business. There is so much evidence now that points to the benefits of placements/ internships when it comes to looking for graduate roles.

High Fliers research 2016 highlighted the importance of students gaining work experience on their CVs http://yearinbusiness.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/high-fliers-2016-research-value-of-work.html
> Almost half the recruiters who took part in the research repeated their warnings from previous years – that graduates who have had no previous work experience at all are unlikely to be successful during the selection process and have little or no chance of receiving a job offer for their organisations’ graduate programmes.

> Recruiters have confirmed that they expect a third of this year's full-time graduate positions to be filled by graduates who have already worked for their organisations, either through paid internships, industrial placements or vacation work.

Emma quoted DLHE stats which indicates that students who have had a placement year are more likely to get a job after graduation (DLHE shows 82% have a job after a sandwich degree vs 74% without).

Emma also quoted a follow up report of the Wilson Review by the Department for BIS (2012) using HESA 2009/10 data which suggests that the average salary of students who have completed a sandwich placement is 8% higher than those who did not 6 months after graduating.

Emma and Catherine both quoted a Ulster University study which concluded that students undertaking a placement year tend on average to graduate directly with a higher degree classification than those proceeding directly to the final year of studies. The study found that the impact of the placement year was statistically significant for both male and female students and associated with an increase classification from 2:2 to 2:1.

Emma Baker also talked of the importance of work experience, voluntary work and involvement in extra curricular activities as a way of enhancing CVs. She stressed that the market for placement jobs is highly competitive and students do need to start looking in their 1st years at ways of improving their chances when they apply in their second year.

Emma pointed students to the Career Service Event listing https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/careers/events/eventlistings.aspx and particularly recommended the Part time jobs fair (28th Sept), Business and Finance Week (17th - 21st October) and Linkedin day (12ths October)





















Students were reminded that they needed to achieve a 2:1 in their 1st year in order to progress into the 2nd year of the Year in Business programme. So the students do need to work hard to secure the grades necessary to stay on the programme and then to secure a placement itself but the results can be very positive. 3 students who have returned from their placement years at Vauxhall (Louis Alecu), Enterprise (Mo Butt) and The Walt Disney Company (Hippolyte Petit) all spoke very enthusiastically about their experiences and why they would recommend a placement year. Hippolyte encouraged the students to dream big!

For the students out on placement last year the 2 responses they were most likely to give in response to the question " how do you think your placement has helped you towards your graduate career goals?" were:
> Enhanced my professional skill set/ competencies
> Increased confidence in myself.  

Mo Butt completed a placement year as a Revenue intern (2015/16) at Enterprise

Louis Alecu completed a placement year as a European Supply chain analyst  (2015/16) at Vauxhall

Hippolyte Petit completed a placement year as a Social Media & Digital Acquisition Intern (2015/16) at The Walt Disney Co

 After the meeting we enjoyed a plentiful tea and it was good to chat to many new students over cake in the Management building foyer and to hear their enthusiasm for the programme.

Year in Business student: Sprinklr internship and Walt Disney placement

Hippolyte Petit, Royal Holloway BSc Management with International Business (Year in Business) will be returning to college in late September to complete the final year of his degree. He has already completed his placement year at the Walt Disney Company and received very positive comments from his manager and has worked as a summer intern in New York at Sprinklr.

Celine Bannino , was Head of European Digital Marketing Experiences EMEA when she managed Hippolyte at the Walt Disney Company. She said : "we simply have never had an intern of this quality before... he is so curious and knowledge hungry that he has very quickly made himself indispensable for us".

Since leaving The Walt Disney Company Hipployte has secured himself a summer internship with Sprinklr in New York where he is currently working. No doubt his successful placement year at The Walt Disney Company helped him in securing this internship and he now continues to gain valuable work experience. Of this role Hippolyte wrote:

These first weeks in New York have been absolutely amazing. The team I have joined at Sprinklr is awesome and involves me in various projects - all is very exciting.

We are supporting big brands with the optimization of their social media activity through a powerful social media management platform: Sprinklr. I am developing great skills in data management and in data storytelling/ interpretation. I find it fascinating! I have had the chance to work on projects for clients such as Uber, Disney, CNN and Coca-Cola. I will be mainly assisting the Coca-Cola account manager here at Sprinklr which is absolutely great! 

The first feedback I have received is very encouraging. I will do my best to give a great impression. Sprinklr has offices all around the world and despite the amazing development which they've had since the creation of the company in 2009, they have sustained a very "startup culture" which I embrace completely. In a nutshell this internship in NYC has been even better than my expectation.

Details of Hippolyte's role at the Walt Disney Company taken from his Linkedin page can be found below .

 Social Media & Digital Acquisition Intern

The Walt Disney Company

May 2015 – June 2016 (1 year 2 months) London, United Kingdom

Assisting the social and digital acquisition marketing teams, this great position offers me an in-depth insight in both social media marketing and performance marketing. I work on Disney, Marvel and Star Wars brands and more, with 25 local teams across Europe, Middle East and Africa.
I have developed a strong focus on quality, innovation and performance.


Social Media EMEA:
• Social Media Management, supporting 25 markets:
Monitoring and support of the paid, owned and earned activity on more than 350 social accounts - Regional campaigns reporting - Social asset management - Leading various training sessions across EMEA, for key stakeholders at all levels across the business.
- Sprinklr, YouTube CMS, Facebook Business Manager, Adobe Photoshop CC, all native social platforms


Digital Acquisition EMEA:
• Search Marketing:
PPC campaigns support, identification of digital acquisition opportunities, keyword strategy development, managing agency relationships
- GoogleAdwords
SEO activity: support of games portal migration http://games.disney.co.uk/ -
- SearchMetrics, SpiderTool & WebCrawler softwares


• Mobile Apps & Games EMEA
As the primary contact point in EMEA for our mobile attribution and analytics platform, I assist with marketing campaigns for Disney, DisneyLife, Marvel and Star Wars mobile apps.
- Kochava, Tableau, AppAnnie

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/hippolyte-petit-a9735b83#

All Year in Business students are encouraged to develop their Linkeinprofiles and take advantage of the Career Service Linkedin days where advice is offered on setting up profiles and students gain the chance to get a professional profile photo taken.

Maria Stopnikova : working in the food industry with Lucidity London

This is a guest post from Maria Stopnikova who is currently doing a marketing placement with Lucidity London, a small, independent marketing consultancy which works with a range of national and international clients, providing research, indepth analysis, developing marketing materials and advising on strategy. Maria is studying BSc Management with Marketing (Year in Business) and has written below about her experience of working in the luxury food industry.

Working in a food industry (Marketing sector)

Apparently, many UK students, as well as any other individuals living here might have had a working experience in a food sector by the age of 16-25. Food network on campuses and in neighbouring towns is so well-developed that possibly every fourth student have worked as a Starbucks barista or food hall assistant.

But here I will give you a few short points from my YIB experience about what are the insights of being involved in a food industry as a marketer.

Some types of food are not easily sold

Let’s take a few examples of food essentials: what can be easier than selling high-volume products such as milk or bread? Would you ever forget to buy some crisps or packed juice as a consumer? Probably not. Though it’s not that simple to make people want your product when you target low-volume, high-end foods, for example mature wines, caviar, and delicious truffles. This range of products is dedicated to a specific audience, therefore, their manufacture goes through ever strict regulations and control.

During the YIB placement in RHUL, I’ve learnt about the regulations and rules of food labelling, transportation, etc. By the end of year, I am starting to understand the all-round principles of successful trading and consumer communication.  

You should learn every single thing about your product/service

How surprised I was when I’ve been told at the beginning of my placement that most consumers know very little about the products which they buy. But that appears to be true: in terms of luxurious market, up to this day even the best experts in this area argue about how many types of sturgeon (fish which is farmed to produce caviar and meat) are in the world. No less interesting question is which caviar can be deservedly called a “King of caviars”? What this means to you as a future marketing expert is that you should learn every little thing about your products, as well as what’s on your competitors’ store shelves.

I was extremely lucky to work in such a distinctive industry and learn from many different channels. Together with my great supervisor, we gained a big knowledge from the meetings, tasting events and exhibitions. Besides, the lion’s share of my experience comes from digital channels which we have been using.

You can learn as much as your consumers

Arguably, this is the best thing I found about my placement year. In a niche segment of food products, as an expert you can learn a lot from listening to the customers and understanding what they wish to know about the market. This helped me to look at the market from consumer’s view and “fill in” some blind spots in my knowledge. In other words, one of the most useful practices I’d recommend trying during your placement – is to ask yourself “what would I like to know about this product or service as a consumer?”. Personally, I found it extremely helpful.

It is vital to say that these points are just a small part of the great experience I got during the YIB placement. Hopefully, some students who consider working in an industry like that will find it interesting.

Marketing literature which Maria was involved in producing

Watch the video of Maria talking more about her placement experience and read more here: http://yearinbusiness.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/maria-stopnikovas-placement-year-at.html